Role of Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein in lung

Abstract

Lung is the organ of gaseous exchange. The epithelium of lung is exposed to inhaled air containing airborne pollutants, pathogens, particulate matters during the breathing process. Some of these chemicals are directly cytotoxic and some of them produce hazardous metabolic byproducts. Altogether these chemicals cause huge amount of redox burden on respiratory system. Lung epithelial cells must have unique repertoires to balance this redox burden or xenobiotic stress. In order understand the stress regulation in lung this study was initiated.According to previous studies FMRP was established as a multifunctional protein that helps in regulation of oxidative and genotoxic stress in the cells from different origin. In absence of this protein more oxidative stress in murine brain, perturbed DNA damage response during replication stress and perturbed stress granule biogenesis were reported. These reports suggested that FMRP may have an important role in cellular stress response pathways.